


They Call Themselves The Trash Of The Thing

by follow_the_sun



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes is Hamilton Trash, Christmas Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hamilton - Freeform, Hamilton: The Musical, M/M, Musicals, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 01:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5228723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follow_the_sun/pseuds/follow_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes might have liked <i>Hamilton: The Musical</i> a little too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Call Themselves The Trash Of The Thing

**Day 1**

“Look, I understand why _you’re_ going,” Bucky says, trying to knot his tie for the eighth time (hey, it’s been seventy years, until two hours ago he didn’t even own a suit, there wasn’t much call for this in Soviet Russia, _okay?)_. “Rah rah America rah patriotism rah, this stuff is right up your alley. I just don’t understand why _I_ have to go with you.”

“This isn’t about patriotism,” Steve says, standing up and taking the tie out of Bucky’s hands. “It’s about the fact that they _invited me._ This show is sold out for the foreseeable future, apparently. It would be rude not to use the ticket.”

“You do know Stark put them up to this because he’s a lazy asshole, right?”

“He was trying to be nice.”

“ ‘Why would you want me at your show when you could have Captain America’ my ass. He was just trying to get out of going himself.”

“Even if he was, they still asked me.” Steve steps back. Of course he’s done a perfect Windsor knot on the first try. _Goddamn him,_ Bucky thinks. “And you have to go because if it’s boring, I need someone to make out with when the house lights are down.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” Bucky sighs. “Okay, fine, let’s go check out this stupid Hamilton thing already.”

 

“Steve.”

“Yeah?”

_“Steve.”_

“I’m right here, Buck.”

“This is _amazing.”_

 “Could you maybe not squeeze my arm quite so hard?”

“Sorry. But this show—”

“Shh.”

“Tony Stark is my very favorite lazy asshole.”

“Shh.”

 

**Day 2**

Tony Stark swings open the door to the training room and hears Steve say, “—really surprised how much I enjoyed it,” five seconds before two hundred pounds of cyborg former Soviet assassin comes barreling out of the corner. Tony has just enough time to think _oh crap I’m gonna die_ before he realizes that Bucky Barnes is…

…Hugging him?

“Tony,” Bucky says, grinning. _“Tony._ You’re the best. Thank you _so much_ for those tickets.”

“Umm,” says Tony. “Did I forget about a baseball game, or are we talking about the musical with the fifty-dollar-bill guy?”

“Only you could confuse a ten and a fifty,” Steve says. “And yeah, I enjoyed it, but Bucky is official Hamilton trash.”

“What?” Tony says.

“When the kids on the internet like a thing,” Bucky starts to explain, earnestly, “they call themselves—”

“Yeah, Barnes, I know what it means. And believe it or not, I’m also familiar with the concept of trolling. Look, it was a dick move to let you two get roped into the show, but in my defense, Cap had the best chance of anybody of faking interest for two hours.”

Bucky is taking a breath to answer when Steve says, calmly, “Bucky. Don’t do a thing. History will prove him wrong.”

Bucky turns to Steve, one eyebrow raised. “Strong words from Stark. Someone oughta hold him to it.”

“I can’t disobey direct orders.”

“Then I’ll do it. Steve,” Bucky says, laying a hand on Steve’s shoulder, “I’m the closest friend you’ve got.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, locking eyes with him, “do not throw away your shot.”

Tony takes three steps backward before realizing that both of them are grinning like idiots.

“What just happened?” Natasha asks.

“I think maybe we should see this show,” Clint replies.

 

**Day 5**

_Text from: Bucky Barnes_  
Steve  
Steve  
Steve  
Steve  
Steve  
STEVE  
  
_Text from: Steve Rogers_  
What?  
  
_Text from: Bucky Barnes_  
I put my name in the Hamilton lottery and I got two tickets.  
  
_Text from: Steve Rogers_  
What are you talking about?  
  
_Text from: Bucky Barnes_  
No time to explain. Get your star-spangled ass to Broadway.

 

**Day 6**

“If you two ancient nerds do not stop trying to rap _right now,_ I swear to God I am going to kill both of you and save Hydra the trouble.”

 

**Day 9**

Steve is getting really sick of killer robots. “This Von Doom character needs to come out and face us,” he snaps over the comms, while he bashes a Doombot in the face with his shield, “instead of sending minions to do his dirty work for him.”

“Couldn’t agree more.” Natasha rolls to a stop beside him, flips up on her feet, and takes out one of the little flying bots with a stinger. “Barnes, any luck finding the control center?”

“I have eyes on target, but,” Bucky’s glare is almost audible, “I need Barton to take it out with one of his exploding arrows, and he won’t get off his ass.”

“Because there are flying robots in the way. I need to wait till the next break in their patrol pattern.”

“You _need_ to hurry the hell up, Barton!”

“Barnes,” Clint shouts, “I AM NOT THROWING AWAY MY SHOT!”

 Bucky and Steve are both still doubled over, laughing, when the control center goes up in flames. Natasha, who’s been taking out Doombots left and right while her team falls apart, glares at the roof of the building where Bucky and Clint took up their positions. “Clint, did you just endanger this entire mission so you could make a Hamilton joke?”

“Okay, this looks bad,” Clint admits, “but in my defense, they’re Doombots. It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“Hamilton trash!” Bucky holds out his metal hand for a fist bump. “Did you just listen to the album or did you actually get tickets somehow?”

“Tickets?” Clint says innocently. “Nah, I went in through the air vents. You get a better view of the stage that way.”

“Don’t even think about it, Bucky,” Steve says, just as Bucky is opening his mouth to ask.

“I’ll show you the entrance later,” says Clint.

 

**Day 14**

“All right,” Tony says, “you’ve convinced me. Official Avengers outing. I’m going to get tickets and we’ll all go if it will _shut you up,_ Barnes.”

“Good luck,” Bucky says. “It’s sold out for literally the next year.”

“I’m Tony goddamn Stark,” says Tony. “I’ll figure something out.”

 

**Day 24**

Bucky puts his hair in a ponytail and goes to the Avengers Tower Halloween party as Alexander Hamilton.

Steve refuses to even _talk_ about going as Eliza Schuyler.

Steve is no fun at all.

 

**Day 32**

Tony’s ego needs taking down a peg or twelve, so the second time Bucky gets tickets in the Hamilton lottery, he gives them to Thor and Jane on principle.

 

**Day 33**

Turns out “HERCULES MULLIGAN!” is a great battle cry when a god of thunder yells it as he bursts onto the battlefield.

Turns out it’s kind of expensive to replace the doors to Avengers Tower after Thor crashes through them hammer-first.

Oops.

 

**Day 39**

“Look, Tony, you were the one who didn’t want to go—”

“I still don’t want to, but now it’s an act of self-defense. You all speak fluent Hamilton and I’m not endangering the free world because I didn’t get some inside joke about a dead President.”

“Hamilton wasn’t a President,” Steve says. “Did you learn any history in school, Tony?”

“Never gon’ be President now,” Natasha murmurs.

“Did you—”

“Mm-hm, the air vents. Worth it.”

Bucky gives everybody a good glare to remind them not to tell Tony he could stream the soundtrack on Amazon. It took him and Natasha half a day to program an override into JARVIS so that the AI will ignore orders to call any of Tony’s friends with theater connections, and he intends to enjoy it for as long as he can.

 

**Day 51**

_“How do you keep doing this?”_ Tony cries, when he hears that Bucky has gotten Bruce a ticket to tonight’s show.

“Just lucky, I guess,” Bucky replies.

He’s been holding onto some great blackmail material on old KGB contacts for a long time. He’ll never find a more satisfying use for it than this.

 

**Day 52**

“I definitely enjoyed it,” Bruce says, very carefully, fully aware that if he phrases this question just a little bit wrong, it could be taken as fighting words. “It was very well done. I’m just asking what the specific appeal was to _Bucky._ He always struck me as more of a Glenn Miller kind of guy.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says wearily. “Hamilton’s just a story about an idealistic orphan who picks fights with half of New York City, loses his best friend-slash-lover in a war, and hangs out with a group of fighters who are just as crazy as he is.”

“Oh,” says Bruce. “Right.”

 

**Day 64**

Bucky relents and tells JARVIS to get Tony a ticket, which the AI does in record time. Tony goes to the show that night, muttering that this entire thing has probably been an elaborate prank to set him up for the most boring night of his life.

 

_Text from Tony Stark:_

SHUT UP BARNES. I’M NOT CRYING. YOU’RE CRYING.

 

**Day 73**

The flashbacks happen a lot less often now, and when they do, Bucky is a lot better at dealing with them. That’s what he keeps telling himself, and mostly, even on the bad days, he believes it.

But in the moment… In the moment, it’s hard.

“Hey. Bucky.” Steve wraps his arms around him and pulls him close. “It’s 2015. You’re in Avengers Tower in New York City. You’re safe.”

“2015,” Bucky repeats. “New York. Safe.”

Steve’s patience is almost infinite. He’ll sit here, repeating the words, as long as he needs to. Bucky doesn’t want him to keep needing to. He gets so tired, sometimes. He wants to skip ahead to the part where the healing process is over, where things can just be okay again.

“I just wish,” he begins, choosing his words carefully. He doesn’t want to alarm Steve; he isn’t going to do anything stupid, but… “I wish I knew _why.”_

“What do you mean, Bucky?”

“I mean, all the things that happened to me… to us… and now we’re here. Sometimes it feels like it can’t be a coincidence, like there has to be some reason we’re both still here, but other times it just seems…”

“Random,” Steve finishes. “And completely unfair, at the same time. Yeah. I think about that a lot.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” If there’s one thing you can count on from Steve Rogers, it’s honesty. Sometimes it’s painful honesty, but it’s always real. “When they first got me out of the ice,” he says, “I wondered if it would’ve been better if I’d just died. I felt like there was no point to coming back if I couldn’t be useful. And trust me, for a while there, I didn’t think I’d ever figure out where I belonged.”

“I didn’t know that. You always seem like you’re so sure…”

“I had stage training, remember? I figured it out eventually, though. I know exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Right here, with you.”

Bucky goes limp against Steve’s chest. “Shut up, punk,” he says, which both of them know means _I love you._

“Make me, jerk,” says Steve, which means _I love you back._

After a while they both get up, and Steve goes to make dinner, and Bucky puts his headphones on and queues up the thirteenth track on his playlist:

 _Life doesn't discriminate_  
_Between the sinners and the saints_  
_It takes and it takes and it takes_  
_And we keep living anyway_  
_We rise and we fall and we break_  
_And we make our mistakes_  
_And if there's a reason I'm still alive_  
_When so many have died_  
_Then I'm willing to wait for it…_  
_I'm willing to wait for it._

 

**Day 78**

“Steve.”

“Mmph.”

“Steve.”

“Nnnng goway. ‘M sleeping.”

“I know. And if we don’t go to bed, we’re gonna be sorry tomorrow.”

Steve tightens his arms around Bucky. “Not moving.”

Truth is, Bucky doesn’t want to move either. Today started at the crack of dawn, because neither of them was ever any good at sleeping in on Christmas morning. After they ripped into the presents and did the Avengers breakfast thing, there were parties until dinner, then a dinner party, then more parties, because Bucky’s long since lost any moral high ground he had about declining invitations. Stark’s penthouse party was still going when they came back here for hot chocolate with whipped cream—the _real_ kind, with actual chocolate melted on the stove, because that’s a tradition that started in 1939—and it’s really no wonder they both crashed on the couch, with the fuzzy red and green blanket and the multicolored lights on the tree shining over both of them.

But seriously, his right arm is asleep and Steve’s going to get a serious crick in his neck. When you’re ninety-eight years old, you have to think about these things. “C’mon, Steve,” he says. “Get up or else.”

Steve opens one eye. “Or else what?”

“I don’t know. Something really bad. I’ll… I got it, I’ll sing.”

Bucky has a terrible singing voice. It’s an objective fact. Only someone who really loves him could deny it, which is why Steve says, “I like it when you sing.”

“Fine. I’ll sing something from Hamilton.”

“You wouldn’t.”

_“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal—”_

“Dammit, Bucky, that’s gonna be stuck in my head all night. Are you ever going to get tired of that show?”

“Ask me again after _never._ Now get up.”

Bucky grabs Steve's arm and hauls him across the apartment, but he stops when they walk past the window. It’s snowing, and they’re high enough up in the Tower that all of Manhattan is spread out beneath them, lit up for the holidays. He doesn’t like winter all that much anymore, but Christmas in New York is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

 _“Look around, look around,”_ he sings softly. _“How lucky we are to be alive right now.”_

Steve kisses him to shut him up. It’s completely worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who wants to check out _Hamilton_ after reading this, first off MUAHAHAHAHA, and second:  
> [Soundtrack streamable on Amazon Prime](http://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Original-Broadway-Recording-Explicit/dp/B013JLBPGE)  
> [Playlist on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp9HUc9HraQ&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4avCXPg6tPgdZzu--hBXUYx) (warning: autoplays)  
>  And I hear it's on Spotify, too!


End file.
